Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Right now in this country there is a housing crisis unfolding. Over 100,000 Australians spent last census night without anywhere to call home, not a safe place, not a place for shelter, nothing permanent, nothing to build your life on—100,000 Australians. Tonight, 9,000 Western Australians will experience a form of homelessness, 12 per cent of them under the age of 12. It is unacceptable that in a wealthy country like Australia so many have to go without a basic human right like housing while others are enabled by decisions made in places like this to hoard housing as a commodity and to treat it as an investment. On average, MPs in this place own 2.5 properties. Think about the symbolism of that. While 100,000 people in Australia have nowhere to call home, the average person in this place has a house to spare. Now, when you think about that for a moment, it begins to explain why this place has overseen a massive commodification and capitalisation of what should be a human right. And make no mistake about it, housing is and has always been a fundamental human right.

Government after government has entered into policy after policy that has driven up prices, driven down availability and there has been a total unwillingness to invest in what has been so desperately needed—the building of new public and social housing at a scale that actually meets demand. Something has to give in this system. Renters are facing their harshest conditions ever, and in this country the social housing waiting list has rapidly expanded while governments—state, federal and territory—do nothing for generations that have been priced out of the housing market and totally barred from the idea of ever being able to afford a home.

In my home state the rental vacancy rate is the lowest it has been in 40 years. Prices are skyrocketing. At the current rate of investment and construction, the social and affordable housing waiting list in Western Australia will not be fulfilled until 3323 at the current rate that the Cook government is progressing that program.

This is something that I have read to the Senate a couple of times in the course of the protracted, months-long debate over this bill in both of the chambers. It still shocks me to read this sentence. In Perth, summers, as anyone from WA would know, are getting hotter and hotter. In the inner metro areas of Perth we are now regularly having 40-degree days—not once, not twice, not as an aberration, but again and again. Not only is this forcing people to attempt to cool down to stay healthy; it's actually forcing people to survive. These are people with roofs over their heads, people who have been lucky enough to scrape together the money, maybe with their friends or their families, to rent a place, yet the landlord refuses to put an air-conditioner in or to make the place in any way sealed, so on a 43-degree day you are forced inside in a place with a tin roof. In the middle of our city, last year alone, renters paid out an extra $5 billion thanks to greedy rent hikes. So on the one hand you've got people trying to survive in their own home and avoid heatstroke, while on the other side you've got people making $5 billion by jacking up the rent.

You would think that the Albanese government, which claims to be progressive, would aim to do something about one of the biggest issues facing Australians today. Instead, their housing plan will actually see the housing crisis in this country deteriorate. It will actually see the situation get worse. What they have given to the community amounts to a single glass of water in a drought. Let's be really open-eyed and honest about what is passing the Senate tonight. It is not a piece of legislation that will do everything that is needed to solve the housing crisis. It is not something that will do half of what is needed to solve the housing crisis in this country. In the context of what people are facing in WA, it amounts to little better than a glassful of water in the middle a drought.

And yet we sit here tonight with that glass at least somewhat reasonably full because the Greens have continued to campaign and push. I am proud that, thanks to community pressure and the relentlessness of campaigners across the country getting out into communities, doorknocking, having conversations, activating their networks, engaging in real grassroots democracy and real grassroots campaigning, we have been able to extract from this government—kicking, screaming and moaning the entire time, as they have—an additional $3 billion in public funding for public and social housing. That is a great achievement, and it falls to every single Green in this place to put the celebration and acknowledgement for that achievement exactly where it belongs—in the hands and the hearts of every single volunteer who joined in our months-long campaign to get that outcome for people, to actually start the work of fixing the problem.

I must be very transparent with the Senate tonight. In the course of this negotiation, in the course of the campaign, I had hoped—I really had hoped—that, with enough opportunity presented to the Albanese government, they would see the reality and the writing on the wall which is the rental crisis in Australia, that after a couple of weeks or a couple of months of a half-hearted resistance to the idea of something as basic and simple as capping rent increases they would join with the Greens in pursuing that reform, particularly as nations such as Germany took up the opportunity. I perhaps had a naive hope that somebody in the government would connect the need to help renters stay in affordable homes with the flow-through impact it would have on a chance of actually clearing the social housing waiting lists in this country. Once you're kicked out of your home because you can't afford the rent, where do you go? You go onto the waiting list that already are locked up for years, because we have structurally underinvested in public housing in Australia for so long.

Yet in negotiation meeting after negotiation meeting they refused to hear the voices of Australian renters as they called out for action and support. Worse than that, they put into the world these ridiculous ideas that the federal government—the poor, helpless federal government!—could never do anything to persuade the big bad state and territory governments to implement a rent freeze or capping process, as though the community hadn't watched them do exactly the same thing on energy prices just before Christmas, as though the community hadn't lived through the reality of the federal government leading that response during the COVID pandemic, as though the Australian community doesn't know, particularly the WA community, that when the Commonwealth wants to get something done it gets the states and territories in a room and it gets it done, particularly when every state on the mainland has a premier or state minister or chief minister from the government's very own party.

It was an absolutely ridiculous notion then. It is an absolutely ridiculous notion now. The Greens will continue to use every single opportunity given to us in this space to push the federal government to do what renters need—to freeze rents, to make unlimited rent increases illegal. Nobody should be able to endlessly jack up the price of somebody's month-to-month home. That is totally unacceptable. We will take every legislative opportunity in this place to do that. And I will tell you this is well: we will take every opportunity in the other legislated spaces in which we are present to force the state and territory governments to act.

There are many campaigners this evening who I'm sure are gearing up right now for the next stage of this housing campaign, of this campaign to see rents frozen. I am very excited to see, at the local government level in WA, the Greens putting forward two fantastic candidates in Sophie Greer for the south ward of Vincent and Isabella Tripp for the Perth City Council. I look forward to that moment on 21 October when we elect Sophie to the south ward of Vincent as an openly Green candidate, running on the platform of action for the housing crisis, in the backyard of the WA housing minister. That will get a bit of movement and a bit of conversation in the WA parliament for sure. We will continue to use every legislative and campaign mechanism to get this done for people.

I also want to acknowledge tonight that as part of this negotiation with the government the Greens have succeeded, again, in bringing to their attention something that should have been plainly obvious to begin with—the idea that every home built under this government program should be built to a high-access standard. We have achieved that outcome, so every home built will be built with some basic disability access principles in place. It will have step-free paths of travel from the street to the entrance and to parking areas; wider internal doors and corridors; toilet entry on a ground-floor level; a bathroom that contains a hobless shower; reinforced walls around the toilet; shower supports; and grab rails so that people can navigate their spaces safely.

It seems strange that I would even have to step this out for a federal government, but, when the federal Labor Party brought this bill to the parliament, they had a commitment to accessible housing that had a nice little carve-out for them. It said they would build accessible homes 'where possible'—where possible! And the Greens said: 'Not good enough. If you're going to invest this public money, you will build universally accessible homes.' We have achieved that outcome for the community, and I am very proud of that. On that basis, I will be withdrawing my second reading amendment on sheet 1962, relating to accessible housing.

To all the housing campaigners that are listening to this debate tonight: thank you for your energy, your enthusiasm and your commitment. Together, we took on an intransigent, corporate owned government and extracted $3 billion and vital changes to the program, and we will continue until rents are frozen and affordable. (Time expired)